The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld a complaint regarding a TV advert for Ladbrokes Ladbucks promotion.

The TV ad, seen on 17 December 2024, featured a voice-over that stated, “This is a Ladbuck, the new way to get rewarded at Ladbrokes, and these are some of the 100 million Ladbucks that will be dropping weekly. Collect them on our free to play games and choose rewards like free spins, free bets and more. Over 100 million Ladbucks dropping every single week. Plus you can even use them to play your favourite games for free in our Ladbucks arcade. Like Fishin Frenzy and Goldstrike. Start collecting at Ladbrokes.com.” The ad featured imagery of coins that displayed the initials ‘Lb’, as well as text that stated “100m LADBUCKS”, FREE BETS” and “FREE SPINS”.

Two complainants who believed the term ‘Ladbucks’ was likely to be of strong appeal to those under 18 years of age.

Ladbrokes said that, in the context of their rewards programme, the term Ladbucks was chosen as a play on the word Ladbrokes, and because it referenced, through the use of the term bucks, that it had value on the Ladbrokes website. They believed the term ‘bucks’ was known as a colloquialism for dollars and was widely used to refer to money or a unit of currency in many contexts, which included video games. They said that the word had no origins in youth culture and believed that it was not of inherent strong appeal to under-18s. They highlighted that both ads had targeting restrictions to reduce the likelihood of children viewing them.

Ladbrokes believed that the term was not associated with any coins from videogames which were popular with under-18s. They said that ‘V-bucks’ from Fortnite and ‘Robux’ from Roblox were in-game currencies that had to be purchased before being used to buy in-game items. They also said that certain elements of Robux required parental consent and, for subscription services, the purchaser must be over 18. Therefore, the only similarity between those coins and Ladbucks coins was the term bucks. They had reviewed the rewards programme in its entirety and believed there was no risk of the term being associated with Fortnite or Roblox.

The ASA first assessed if there were online games which featured tokens depicted as coins, and whether they were very popular with children and strongly associated with youth culture, before considering if features of those coins had noticeable parallels with a Ladbuck.

Based on that data, the ASA considered a significant number of under-18s were likely to be familiar with those games and their specific features, which included reward schemes that involved earning and using coins in associated game stores. For those reasons, the ASA considered both games and their associated features were strongly associated with youth culture.

For those reasons the ASA concluded the name Ladbucks, when considered alongside the imagery and the application of the coin in the ads, was depicted in a manner which was similar to features in video games popular with children. We therefore considered the term in the ads was likely to be of strong appeal to under-18s.

The ads must not appear again in their current form. We told LC International t/a Ladbrokes not to include content in ads that was reflective of youth culture or which had strong appeal to those under 18 years of age.